


Crossed Lines

by dirtyshoes_drysocks



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: (aka Jason's stunt in the Pit), Angst, Basically the time Bruce punched Dick, Bruce Wayne's A+ Parenting, Gen, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nightmares, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, no editing we die like robins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:01:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29981865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtyshoes_drysocks/pseuds/dirtyshoes_drysocks
Summary: Everything is good now- Dick is fine and Bruce is fine and Jason is alive. It's all good but Dick is not the kind of man who forgets and he remembers when it was bad.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	Crossed Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Dick Grayson deserves to be angry and bitter but he's too nice to hold grudges against Bruce. So guess who's doing it for him?

People trust Dick Grayson.

Maybe they trust him more than they should, more than he deserves but people trust Dick Grayson. Sometimes when he is sick or sleep-deprived or stressed (more so than usual at least), he can imagine the weight of their trust in his fingers. He feels their trust like vines growing and growing and growing till he can barely open his fists.

Till those vines become a noose.

But it’s okay, it’s okay. They trust him and he needs that. Robin had been around before the antidotes were perfected and god, he’s been doing this since he was eight, he can handle a few hallucinations. It’s difficult to love someone whose name you don’t know so when they trust Nightwing, he knows it’s the closest thing he’s going to get. He takes it.

The thing about trust, though, is that it has to be earned. And how does a man who wouldn’t even tell you his name earn that? 

He stays true to his word.

English is an easy language to be honest in, too easy in Dick’s opinion. It is a language of right angles and bland syllables. Yet, in any language Dick Grayson means what he says.

Sometimes, he wants to laugh because Dick Grayson (easy go lucky, charming, frivolous) means what he says but Batman does not. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every time he sets foot in the Manor, he has to stifle a laugh. 

That first step is something he had dreamt about as he had grieved his first brother and Bruce. Sometimes, he would put his foot on the worn threshold and cartoonish spikes à la Indian Jones would impale him and he would struggle to pull his useless, bleeding foot away. Those were the good nights.

Sometimes Bruce would be standing there, bathed in the warm golden lights of the Manor and smiling with a soft look Dick remembers from his early childhood. And Dick... he would run to Bruce, to the man he called his father, and for a minute everything would be alright. For a minute, Dick wouldn’t be cold or aching or tired. 

Bruce would hug him. 

Bruce would hug him and Dick would smile into his shoulders as he felt fingers ruffling through his hair.

“Dad?” Dick would say, pathetically earnest.

“I thought we were brothers actually.” 

Jason’s voice, perverted by whatever demon that lived inside Dick’s head, would come out mocking and cruel from Bruce’s mouth and suddenly Dick would feel the hug morph into a throttle. Bruce’s arms choking, choking...

Of course, those days are long gone now.

Long, long gone but Dick still holds the acrid memories of those nightmares and Bruce’s fist on his jaw. Every time he sets foot in the Manor, he remembers being thrown out.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos and criticism fuel me!


End file.
